Lu­veve High School marks 50 years

Head­mistress Mrs Gertrude Ndlovu’s speech on the oc­ca­sion of the school’s 50th An­niver­sary and Speech and Prize Giv­ing Day. N be­half of the school and prize win­ners here present, I am de­lighted to wel­come you all to this very ex­cit­ing back to back oc­ca­sion char­ac­terised by the 50th An­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion and speech and prize giv­ing for the tal­ented, hard-work­ing stu­dents and staff as we cel­e­brate 50 years “Sisem­fundweni – The Lu­veve we want.”

Our theme ladies and gen­tle­men is heav­ily in­clined to­wards that deep search for iden­tity and a sense of be­long­ing as we seek to achieve the best ed­u­ca­tion we on of­fer in a life time.

As we mix and min­gle with young peo­ple, we take great plea­sure in re­ju­ve­nat­ing our­selves and con­tinue to get even thirstier for those vi­tal as­pects of young peo­ple lead­ing to a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of our learn­ers. This does not only give us a bet­ter po­si­tion to de­velop learn­ing pro­grammes, im­prove teach­ing strate­gies, en­cour­age in­ter­est­ing study habits that are ben­e­fi­cial to all of us but al­lows us to adapt fast to chang­ing trends and re­spond to new ideas in the so­ci­ety. This is a top se­cret shared with you in the be­lief that you will keep for it makes Lu­veve con­tinue to shine even at 50 years of age.

Lu­veve High School has an en­rol­ment of 1 662 stu­dents of which 773 are males while 889 are fe­males. There is a staff com­pli­ment of 29 male teach­ers and 49 fe­male teach­ers all of whom are qual­i­fied with three hold­ing Masters De­grees. Lu­veve has 25 non-teach­ing mem­bers thus bring­ing the en­tire staff com­ple­ment to 103.

Lu­veve High School, even at 50 years, still has that unique as­pect of be­ing the only school in the Western sub­urbs of Bulawayo run­ning as both day and board­ing school. The school has a self-con­tained sewage sys­tem and also of­fers ac­com­mo­da­tion to teach­ing and non­teach­ing staff. Our board­ers’ sphere of in­flu­ence reaches as far as Kwekwe, Vic­to­ria Falls, Hwange, Matopo and a larger part of Mata­bele­land South. Aca­demic of­fer­ings The school has a wide range of sub­jects de­signed to equip our prod­ucts with valu­able skills aimed at en­abling them to com­pete ef­fec­tively out there in the mar­ket. We draw our in­spi­ra­tion from the fact that our

Even at fifty, we are proud of our Dis­cov­ery-en­riched Cur­ricu­lum known as DEC which en­cour­ages all our stu­dents to make an orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion to their field of study as an in­te­gral part of their pro­fes­sional ed­u­ca­tion. Such a strate­gic ap­proach pre­pares the learner to know how to gen­er­ate new knowl­edge in or­der to meet the de­mands of the Mod­ern-day work­force, to prac­tise pro­fes­sion­ally at and be­yond the level of in­ter­na­tional stan­dards.

In or­der to demon­strate the prac­ti­cal­ity proof of the fact that ex­pe­ri­ence counts, while “wine gets tastier with age”, we care­fully lis­ten and re­spond to the World around us, a strat­egy that ben­e­fits the learner as they progress to a new job, new univer­sity, new car­rier and new life.

Lu­veve High School’s quest for see­ing be­yond the fu­ture in­spires us to be­lieve soon and very soon, we shall be cel­e­brat­ing the birth of Lu­veve High SchoolUniver­sity. The rich evo­lu­tion of our his­tory gives us a strong foun­da­tion to start think­ing out­side the box and con­sider twin­ning up with a lo­cal Univer­sity which will be spe­cial­is­ing in Vo­ca­tional, Tech­ni­cal sub­jects such as Art, Metal Fabri­ca­tion, Car­pen­try and Join­ery, Brick Lay­ing, Build­ing Stud­ies, Tex­tiles and many oth­ers.

Lu­veve High School, be­ing a non-se­lec­tive cen­tre con­tin­ues to com­mand a high stan­dard of per­for­mance with the ad­vanced level pass rate cur­rently stand­ing at 91 per­cent up from 80 per­cent in 2014 and ‘ O’ Level be­ing 18 per­cent up from 12 per­cent in 2014. Among the high rank­ing sub­jects such as Lit­er­a­ture in English, IsiNde­bele, Eco­nom­ics, Bi­ol­ogy, TCD, His­tory, Ge­om­e­try and Me­chan­i­cal Draw­ing, our pass rate cur­rently stands at 100 per­cent at A-Level.

Al­low me to draw your at­ten­tion to the fact that we still need to in­vest in pro­duc­ing a pass rate be­yond or above the na­tional stan­dard.

A num­ber of our stu­dents are ad­mit­ted at the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tional uni­ver­si­ties, Polytech­nic col­leges, teacher col­leges and nurs­ing schools to men­tion but a few. Our di­rect prod­ucts in­clude Pro­fes­sor CB Ny­athi Co-Vice Chan­cel­lor of Nust, Prof. Welsh­man Ncube — renowned leg­is­la­tor, Kennedy Nde­bele of High­landers Foot­ball club, Dr Char­lie Dube, Li­son Ncube former Child Par­lia­men­tar­ian and Head­boy and in­ter­est­ingly Bu­sani Sibindi his Deputy Head­boy as well as Mr W Ncube the former School Head and not for­get­ting our Guest of Hon­our . Ladies and gen­tle­men, this is just a sam­ple of the many other in­di­vid­u­als out there , who are prom­i­nent fig­ures in the so­ci­ety. Al­low me to chal­lenge th­ese in­di­vid­u­als to form a strong alumni , take a mo­ment to think about their sec­ondary and high school days and say to each other, “We need to plough back” and make Lu­veve the “Lu­veve We Want.”

Fur­ther, the school em­barks on var­i­ous en­rich­ment pro­grammes like NUSTSEP for Math­e­mat­ics and Sci­ence stu­dents and HOCIC for English stu­dents. Such ex­po­sure has opened up even wider op­por­tu­ni­ties for our stu­dents as il­lus­trated by the fol­low­ing achieve­ments:

1. One STEM ben­e­fi­ciary Bon­gani Ndlovu won a STEM Air Ticket to Sil­i­con Val­ley Univer­sity in Amer­ica and will be among stu­dents from the other prov­inces fly­ing to Amer­ica. We also have two stu­dents who won IPods and are cur­rently se­ri­ously en­joy­ing ac­cess to cur­rent in­for­ma­tion through tap­ing into tech­nol­ogy. The two stu­dents are: Vir­ima May­i­bongwe and Ndi­weni Ntokozo in L6Sc.

Our L6 stu­dent, Ge­orge Nkosi com­peted in the Old Mu­tual Math­e­mat­ics Olympiad, did ex­tremely well and won him­self, one par­ent, his pa­tron and of cour­ses his head a ticket to Harare booked for a night at Meik­les Ho­tel.

Un­der School’s An­nual Sport, Sci­ence and Arts Fes­ti­vals, Lu­veve High School is an un­doubt­edly ex­celling in­sti­tu­tion in sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties. The school’s name is a house­hold name when it comes to Vol­ley­ball, a num­ber of stu­dents have com­peted at Na­tional and In­ter­na­tional Level. We greatly ap­pre­ci­ate the mas­sive ef­fort ap­plied by the coaches, man­agers and stu­dents thus dis­play­ing a very high level of com­mit­ment. Mr Wil­liam Mazviro and Madam Tha­bani Siz­iba are the peo­ple at the helm of it all.

Lu­veve High School is the cur­rent holder of the Nash De­bate com­pe­ti­tion cup and is cur­rently pre­par­ing to go to Botswana (Gaberone) to com­pete at In­ter­na­tional level in De­cem­ber. Kuthiwa Udiwo lu­fuze im­biza— in­ci­den­tally the Speaker also hap­pens to be the cur­rent Nash Bulawayo Met­ro­pol­i­tan Prov­ince Chair­lady. We want to thank Mr Misheck Tshuma and Mrs Ot­tilia Mbiba for nur­tur­ing the team’s tal­ent to this mag­nif­i­cent level and con­tinue to chal­lenge them to work to­wards years in ex­is­tence. This does not go with­out say­ing that the school is con­fronted with in­fra­struc­ture that has over-lived its ten­ure. This there­fore means that the school is car­ry­ing an ex­tra bur­den to re­fur­bish its aged in­fra­struc­ture, retic­u­la­tion sys­tem and at the same time work to­wards ca­pac­i­tat­ing the mod­ern and tech­no­log­i­cal struc­tures to re­main com­pet­i­tive in to­day’s so­ci­ety. Fi­nan­cial sup­port, in­fras­truc­tural de­vel­op­ment and proper retic­u­la­tion can­not be di­vorced from qual­ity ed­u­ca­tion.

I am re­li­ably in­formed, though dis­ap­point­ingly, that par­ents at this school have a cul­ture of not pay­ing fees, and in cases where they make pay­ment plans they never ful­fil them. Sur­pris­ingly, the very par­ents de­mand im­pres­sive re­sults from the school. The ques­tion is: How does one get good re­sults with no re­sources? May we please hon­our our obli­ga­tions.

I recog­nise that the school is thread­ing on a legacy of great achieve­ment and most pre­ferred school which we need to up­hold and most prob­a­bly sur­pass as enun­ci­ated in to­day’s theme. As par­ents we are the im­por­tant au­thors of Lu­veve High School des­tiny as a vi­sion with­out ac­tion is a day­dream and ac­tion with­out a vi­sion is a night­mare. So we need to de­velop the will to help our chil­dren be who they are. An in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion pays the best in­ter­est. To The Staff: I am re­li­ably in­formed that the school boasts of all qual­i­fied staff some of whom have Masters De­grees. It is a pos­i­tive step in the right di­rec­tion in re­al­is­ing one’s con­fi­dence in the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the teach­ing per­son­nel. I, there­fore chal­lenge you to a lofty vi­sion bring­ing the Cup home from Botswana.

At Lu­veve High School, as we con­tinue to search for the lost glory, we en­cour­age ev­ery par­tic­i­pant to re-di­rect their en­er­gies to mak­ing their best to re­gain its former glory as the most pre­ferred school. We not only ex­pect the learn­ers to be­come ac­tive, we also ex­pect that they be thank­ful to par­ents, teach­ers and the so­ci­ety as a whole for af­ford­ing them the op­por­tu­nity to tap wis­dom ooz­ing from the ded­i­cated duty con­scious teach­ers read­ily await­ing dish­ing out that over­flow­ing knowl­edge to ac­tive re­cip­i­ents and with learn­ers at heart.

Our stu­dents are not in any case a mis­fit in the so­ci­ety be­cause as they leave school they take with them the virtue of “give” rather than just “take” as clearly in­di­cated by the pres­ence of Dr Nde­bele W who sac­ri­ficed his time to make a few dol­lars and chose to spend the greater part of the day with us to­day. We also have a num­ber of former stu­dents who made var­i­ous do­na­tions in cash or kind based within and abroad.

To the class of 2016, please note that as you leave your school for your sec­ond home, you fly away like birds, catch the wind and be­gin your jour­ney, your odyssey and seek your dream. Al­ways dream big for it pays to keep mov­ing not mind­ing the speed but valu­ing the need to con­tinue gath­er­ing strength and courage as long as you keep your heads down to quickly iden­tify and avoid ob­sta­cles lest you fall and prob­a­bly fail to rise.

CHAL­LENGES We are still strug­gling to greatly im­prove our OLevel re­sults. Lim­ited re­sources are a stum­bling block re­sult­ing mainly from non-pay­ment of fees by most par­ents who are abus­ing the gov­ern­ment pol­icy on fees pay­ment. It is our wish that all par­ents play a re­spon­si­ble role and al­low their chil­dren to in­vest in ed­u­ca­tion if we are to break that as­sumed per­pet­ual seed of poverty.

To the alumni and par­ents here with us to­day we thank you for com­ing back to your sec­ond home and re­mem­ber to al­ways al­low God to take the lead.

I thank you all, please en­joy the rest of the day and al­ways re­mem­ber Lu­veve High is your school— make Lu­veve “The Lu­veve We Want”. of lead­ing in the pro­vi­sion of qual­ity ed­u­ca­tion for so­cio-eco­nomic trans­for­ma­tion. You are the icons of th­ese chil­dren hence your con­duct should be such that you ded­i­cate your­selves to this noble pro­fes­sion where you ap­pre­ci­ate the mam­moth task that you deal with the most del­i­cate, volatile but most use­ful part of the hu­man — the mind of the child, which can trans­form the world. Hence, your prime task is to en­sure that the ed­u­ca­tion you of­fer pre­pares the chil­dren to ac­cess the tools of the new eco­nomic and cur­ricu­lum fron­tier and de­velop fun­da­men­tal val­ues of ubuntu/unhu and skills that will last for a life­time to help them live the world am­i­ca­bly. Com­mit­ment to duty can never be overem­pha­sised at this fo­rum but Nikos Kazantza­kis notes that ideal teach­ers are those who use them­selves as bridges over which they in­vite their stu­dents to cross, then hav­ing fa­cil­i­tated their cross­ing, joy­fully col­lapse, en­cour­ag­ing them to cre­ate bridges of their own.

Con­se­quently, I call upon the ed­u­ca­tors here present to help the stu­dents to the thresh­old of their minds and to teach their stu­dents to see the vi­tal­ity in them­selves. Ed­u­ca­tors need to ap­pre­ci­ate that their task rests in help­ing the stu­dents think of ed­u­ca­tion as a means of de­vel­op­ing our great­est abil­i­ties, be­cause in each of us there is a pri­vate hope and dream which, ful­filled, can be trans­lated into a ben­e­fit for ev­ery­one and greater strength of the na­tion. As teach­ers we need to keep in mind that we are work­ing to­wards the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the new cur­ricu­lum and con­tin­u­ous as­sess­ment in the year 2017 in line with the Zim-As­set goals. So let us help our stu­dents get the best of ed­u­ca­tion for a na­tion with­out ed­u­ca­tion is a dead na­tion.